I'm still curious how they get round the Clarke Kent/Superman double identity thing, that is why I've always hated Superman, he's a friggin journalist and his girlfriend the best journalist in Metropolis can't figure out who he is (straight away). I hope they take a whole different approach and scrap the secret identity stuff because it is just silly. If they do so, then this movie might just work! Superman needs complete reinventing to work in the 21st Century hopefully this is the beginning.

Zack Snyder is a horrific director. David Goyer wrote the script on his own and he's pretty craptastic when no one's re-writing his stuff. I don't believe Nolan is very involved in this other than saying, "Make it darker." I have 0% faith this movie will be watchable.

I tried watching Sucker Punch one day when I was bored and I think it will be a lot of that - crap on a stick.

Smallville was very smart about how they worked that into the show later on when Clark starts working at the Planet. Since he hadn't thought of a name yet, he was called "the Blur" by the papers because that's all people saw whenever a crime was stopped.

But then people start to catch on to the idea that Clark might possibly be "the Blur" so Clark invents this bumbling "Clark Kent" persona so it throw everyone off his trail, except for Lois, since she kind of already knew at that point.

I can kind of buy most people not knowing. Assuming you only see him from a distance briefly and his body language is 100% different it might be possible to trick people. And, ultimately, people see what they want to see - they don't want to believe that the bumbling guy in the cubicle is Superman. They want to believe that he's something supernatural and unique. Check out John Barrymore in the original Jekyll and Hyde film to see how much different a person can make himself look with no makeup. It's pretty incredible.

Looks like they turn Superman into an anti-hero here. After Batman did that so well in the Dark Knight movies I don't know if I can get behind it for Superman. Seems very likely it's just going to be a lame re-enactment of the same plot.

True, Goyer on his own can be pretty terrible, but so can Frank Miller( The Spirit, anyone?) However, with the right amount of guidance, Goyer can do some pretty good stuff; plus,I don't think Nolan would put his name on it if he knew it was a shitty movie like Returns.

I'm just not sold, it's like Clarke is an idiot... he wants to be inconspicuous and doesn't want people to question him, he should be working on the farm obscure away from a busy city keeping a low profile. Instead he decides to take a job in Metropolis where millions of people can see him and work in an industry which its business is... ratting people out! I've heard the best disguise is too camouflage in so people don't suspect, but seriously in the 21st century with technology and social media he'd be caught out in a day or so, yes he can create some form of illusions but Superman is an alien the first thing I'd think as a journalist is that he has the power to do such things. For me it's shapeshifting or looking at a new angle altogether (and Superman needs it more than any major Superhero). If this is going to be a serious depiction of Superman in the same vein as Batman Begins then they need to change the obvious and give some form of realism. (yes it will still be far fetched, but it just makes the audience look dumb, and the fellow cast members even dumber if they can't figure out the obvious).

Tell me if Batman didn't wear a mask (or change his voice), how long do you think it would take people to realize that Playboy Tony Stark like Bruce Wayne is indeed that Dark brooding Batman (two polar opposite personas)? It would take a day or two tops. It's just retarded to me whatever spin you put on it, you see the face..it's all over very quickly especially in the technology/social media driven world of journalism that Supes lives in.. it would be over in hours.

Well I guess the thing is, Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne are very public figures. I'm not a big comics guy but I always got the impression that Clark Kent's identity worked b/c he's just a reporter at a newspaper, not a billionaire businessman or playboy. He's just an every man you might not look twice at on the street.

Well. Here's my only comment. Is he working for the Planet in the movie? It seemed to me that he's been discovered by the U.S. Army and possibly working for them? I don't see any evidence in the trailer of him working for a newspaper.

Even though The Punisher will always be #1 to me, followed by Spider-Man & Batman, and even though we all grow up and say Superman is lame because of how much power he has, and his villains suck....

Superman will always be the greatest superhero of all time.

Superman is who we all wanted to be as a kid. He's the guy we thought EVERYONE wanted to be like. At a time when everything is innocent, when everything is pure. When people don't lie, or act cruel for the sake of it. When greed, hate, and the general wickedness of the World doesn't exist to you. A time in your life when you want to grow up and save the World. That one day you hope people look up to you like that. That you'll become someone worth looking up to. It's a time before all the exposure to the way the World really is jades your point of view, and you realize that so much of what lives on Earth isn't really worth saving.

It's also a time when Superman can rebuild The Great Wall by looking at it.

He works with the most invasive, investigative, nosey people in the DC universe, who find ways of getting their story no matter the cost.... Superman dominates the Newspapers headlines.. you don't have to do the Math here to realize how frigging dumb they have to be to not put two and two together. Social Media, CCTV, Youtube... one sniff of Clarke (and why wouldn't there be considering they look and are the same!) and its all over the Internet circulating around the world... if they want to make a mildly realistic movie (in the realms of superheros), they shouldn't treat the audience or the movie population like morons. This is why I think the previous Superman film flopped so bad because people just don't buy the Supes Origins anymore. We demand some intelligence and the current set up does not offer such. It's time for a major overhaul for the 21st century or I see it going the same way as the last movie.

For me, Watchmen was awful. I also thought 300 was awful, too, but I know it has its fans. The Dawn of the Dead remake was complete trash, too. I gave him a few legitimate tries, but every time I just walked away angry at having wasted my time. I dunno, he's not even like Michael Bay, a guy who can make very beautiful empty pictures with enough going on to be fun. All of Snyder's movies are just shallow, one dimensional characters with poor dialog who drudge along from one slow motion action sequence with dramatic music to the next.

I know the trust needs to be in Nolan, but he's only producing and I honestly don't know how involved we should expect him to be. If his brother, Jonathan, was involved, I'd have a lot more faith the movie could be salvaged from Goyer and Snyder, but without Jonathan, I think it's going to be pretty poor.

I don't have anything against a Superman movie doing well. I hope it's decent enough that Superman fans are happy. That fan base hasn't had a lot to be happy with for a long, long time.

For our generation perhaps (even though I hate Superman as you can tell by my biased hate posts below lol)... but I speak to my cousins who are 12, 13 they love superheroes and Supes isn't even on there radar. Ironman, Batman, Avengers are wayyyyy above Superman, if anything they think he's a bit of loser for his clean cut one dimensional shtick. Also kids are SMARTER than we were (thanks to the media and the Internet) even they realize how dumb the origins are, secret identity.. glasses!.. really? Indeed it was simpler time we lived in :)

I agree with you, anyway. I was optimistic Watchmen would turn out ok because the source material was so good. I mean, I know a lot of changes would need to be made to fit a 30 year old novel into a current 2 hour movie, but it still turned out poor. Snyder just doesn't have the gift of telling a story. He can film some cool looking shots, but that's about all.

Haha, see, the youth is so jaded. Superman shouldn't be a loser for being so clean cut. I mean, he could run the World if he wanted. Destroy the entire planet, yet he chooses to help & serve mankind. To be as absolutely good as possible.

The kids today would probably dig Superman if he was as predominant as he was in the 80's. I mean, as far as pop-culture was concerned, Superman was all we had. Now a days? Holy shit. Every superhero in the World has a film, and they all kick-ass. Superman has had one film in the last 25 years, and it sucked. Except for Kevin Spacey's performance as Lex.

Except they've done numerous stories over the years explaining why people don't put two and two together. I'd direct you to John Byrne's Superman run, Smallville, Superman: Secret Origin, Earth One and any number of other stories in the pantheon.

I wish I had time for a longer reply, but: yes. Yes. I actually find the constant need for angsty "realism" in FICTION to be juvenile in comparison to Superman. It reminds me of emo hipster teenagers. Grow up. Doing the right thing is cool. It's like saying that Jesus or the Buddha were naive hippies. It makes one sound like a particularly tedious 15-year-old.

Personally, I'd still rank Superman I and II in the Top 10 of superhero movies, so I am highly skeptical that this movie can get the job done of reinventing the wheel and reinventing him for a new generation. Christopher Reeve's take on Kent/Superman was just awesome in every sense of the word. He played the likeable wuss and confident alien to perfection. Terrence Stamp's Zod was pitch perfect for its time as well (he's also badass in The Limey).

In Superman Returns, Brandon Routh's interpretation was basically a homage to Reeve. Kate Bosworth was useless and was way too young for the role. Spacey did the best he could with the material he was given. And lastly, the climatic scene was just Superman using brute strength instead of his mind as well.

I do dig some of the casting choices for this new one, though. Sooooo.... see how it plays out?

I don't know that under-exposure has been the reason for Superman's lack of popularity. I think it's more because most writers can't get a handle on the character. Ironically, two Scots have done wonders with him: Mark Millar and Grant Morrison. Millar's Superman Adventures all-ages comic was kick ass awesome. Millar's All Star Superman was the stuff of legends. Besides them, the guys currently doing the all-ages Superman comic (Art Franco and someone who's name I forgot) are the only ones doing it right.

Supes can be awesome when written well. But what I'd really like to see is a film with villains besides Luthor or Zod. I mean, they've never even touched on Brainiac, and if they went with the animated Adventures of Superman origin - i.e., Brainiac was Krypton's central computer system that saved itself while letting Krypton explode, that could be an organic way to revisit Superman's Kryptonian origins without rehashing what Donner and Singer have already done. And I would kill to have Darkseid as the main villain. Again, just think about how much of an awesome antagonist he was in Adventures of Superman. DC and Warner Bros. have drug their feet so long on getting Darkseid on the screen that now if he ever does appear, general audiences will think he's a rip off of Thanos instead of the other way around.

I think a lot of that is due to Batman, Iron Man, and the Avengers all having movies that were worldwide phenomenons in their formative years. Comics in their paper form are not near as big a deal today as they were when we 25-35 year olds were kids; the movies have a much larger impact in today's world. Awesome movies move them higher on young fans' list. As cool a character as Batman is, release a campy Adam West-style film today with no sense of irony and Batman drops several spots on that radar.

YMMV, of course, but I thought it went beyond translation into recitation. Not smart enough to keep the subversive undertone of the original, not energetic enough to be an enjoyable action movie (Jeffrey Dean Morgan aside) and Snyder's SLOOOOW-MOOOOO fetish just doesn't work for me.

That said, I thought 300 worked better when I thought of it as a bromantic comedy.

I'm not sure he's an "anti-hero," per se. If the film is taking a Nolanesque "what if this happened in real life" take on a superhero myth, obviously the government would have a major interest in Superman and would regard him as a potential threat, even treating him with caution after he wins their trust.

While Bosworth was too young, it's also kind of weird that in this new film, Lois is significantly older than Clark (Amy Adams is nine years older than Henry Cavill). Not that the ages will be even mentioned in the movie itself, nor is this even a big deal, since I'm all on board with a terrific actress like Adams in the role.

This is a great point. Superman is often thought of as having a fairly thin rogues gallery, but that's only because most of the major names (Brainiac the biggest of all, plus Metallo, Mxyzptlk, Prankster, Doomsday, Cyborg Superman, Parasite, etc.) have never been really featured on a major film stage.

To most folks, Superman's rogues gallery ends at Luthor, Zod and Bizarro, the latter perhaps only due to the Seinfeld episode.

I'm imagining a porn called "Man of Faggotry" and it's not too different from what I'm seeing here. Sounds like they're trying their best to make this sound important like the Nolan Batman movies, but in actual substance there's no indication it will even remotely match the awesomeness of the Nolan stuff. We'll see.

IMO the problem with Supermans rogues is that they all are easily beatable. Superman is a GOD among Men.

He would blow through all his rogues.

Metallo- Fly up a mile away and burn the shyt out of him with him eye beams. Same with Cyborg Supes, Parasite, Toyman and all the other B villains.

Now when you get to Imperiex or Darksied Mongul etc... they are all bruisers essentially and thats no fun either, so really the best Superman rogues are the ones that can out think him and thats Luthor.

Superman as a character is terrible. He has no weaknesses other than a mystical rock that is impossible to get (read: totally easy to get).

He has no angst, like Peter Parker. He has no internal issues, like Tony Stark. He has no great tragedy, like Bruce Wayne. His alter-ego is down-home guy that everyone likes. The girl he wants is totally ok with him continuing to be hero so there isn't even any conflict there.

There is NO relatable conflict with this character. He is so overpowered that he has to fight entities that eat universes to give him a realistic enemy.

This is why these movies keep turning to shit. Once we outgrew the "wow look at him fly!" effects of the 70's the character has ceased to hold anyone's attention for very long.

If written competently, Darkseid enjoys torturing Superman psychologically and spiritually, and he is the master strategist of the DC multiverse. Mongul is responsible for the Black Mercy story, which gave readers an awesomely pissed Supes and one of the greatest panels ever - "Burn."